[XBob]

67 - "In reality, this example is overly simplified because the Ford Motor Company never started at the first step with a single auto worker making everything with his bare hands. But the reality is also this: Henry Ford was "outsourcing" part of his process from the very first day he started manufacturing cars . . . because he was building cars using steel from mills in Pennsylvania and tires from Ohio, using materials from iron mines in Tennessee and coal mines in West Virginia -- and none of these other workers was driving to work in a brand-new Ford automobile."

Actually, you have got this bass ackwards. Read up on a history of Ford Motor Company, and you will find it fascinating, and that Ford attempted and to a large degree succeeded, in a Ford car being wholly ford owned process, from mining the ore, to smelting the iron, to forging the steel, to making the glass, to manufacturing and assembling the parts, and along with his friend Harvey Firestone, just about succeeded in total end to end manufacturing to sales.

[Alberta's Child]

Actually, you have got this bass ackwards. Read up on a history of Ford Motor Company, and you will find it fascinating, and that Ford attempted and to a large degree succeeded, in a Ford car being wholly ford owned process, from mining the ore, to smelting the iron, to forging the steel, to making the glass, to manufacturing and assembling the parts, and along with his friend Harvey Firestone, just about succeeded in total end to end manufacturing to sales.

Yes, but nothing you've said here contradicts what I posted. Even if Ford controlled the entire process of extraction, fabrication, and production from start to finish, he still had to "outsource" part of the process to someone (even if the "outsourcing" was to another part of teh Ford empire) who could not afford to buy a new Ford car every few years.

When you look back at it, Ford was absolutely right -- the wages he paid to his assembly line workers had to be enough to allow them to buy a new Ford car every few years. But this did not extend to every step in the production process, or else he would have been out of business very quickly. He couldn't pay the steelworker as much as he paid the assembly line worker, because the steelworker wasn't producing cars -- he was producing steel. So under Ford's philosophy the steelworker had to be paid enough to allow him to buy the steel he produced (not that he needed it, but you get the point). And the people who worked in the iron and coal mines had to paid enough to allow them to buy the iron and coal they produced, etc.

Obviously, things changed as machinery and automation were introduced into the process, which allowed steelworkers and miners to be paid enough to buy cars every few years. But my original point would still hold, in that the machinery used to automate part of the extraction and fabrication processes would have their own internal "chain" similar to the one we've discussed for the auto manufacturing process. And somewhere in that chain there must be a sizeable element that can't afford to purchase the end product. Without this element in place, there's no point in making any cars in the first place.